Customer Reviews

Reporting: Writings from The New Yorker

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A friend of mine who spent in his early years in the former Soviet Union, and knows its culture well, Moshe Fushman found Remnick's 'Lenin's Tomb' to be one of the most insightful books as yet written about Russian society.
Remnick shows in his investigative interviews an in- depth knowledge of his subjects that enables him to present them in a new light. He is a writer who tends to see things others may not. And certainly he is one with a stance and position of his own.
I saw that clearly in the long New Yorker interview he did with former Israeli Prime Minister Barak. This largely favorable report proved later to somewhat overplay Barak's brilliance and underplay his difficulty in learning from others less brilliant than himself. But in general Remnick in his Middle East interviews shows ( Netanyahu, Sari Nusseibeh, Hamas) good knowledge, with not always the best judgment. His optimism is naive, and his understanding of Palestinian society not really critical enough.
He writes more surely about Solzhenitsyn, Putin, and the world of Eastern Europe. His takes on literary figures beside Solzhenitsyn, Amos Oz, Don DeLillo are also insightful.
In general his pieces tend to have a swiftness and comprehensiveness which makes them, to me, at least very appealing.
This is a first- class collection of essays and highly recommended.

Reporting contains a rich assortment of twenty-three essays, all essentially personality profiles. In the book's preface, Remnick describes his method: "The pieces collected here--all written for The New Yorker, where I have worked since 1992--attempt to see someone up close, if only for a moment in time." Attempt is the key word. Remnick admits his interest in profiling people who seek to shape their public image and control what any writer (and reader) learns about them. Each essay is an account of a struggle between Remnick, who is seeking understanding and access, and (usually) a powerful or famous person, who only wants the public to have access on his or her terms.

As a former newspaper reporter with experience on beats ranging from police to politics to sports, Remnick is well equipped for this task. He wields all the tools of good journalism--observation, interviews, research, and writing strong sentences--to construct lengthy and riveting pieces of narrative nonfiction. His essays always embody what David Halberstam used to call "density"; Remnick clearly has more material and knowledge than he weaves into his finished pieces, which he crafts to present his readers with the most truthful portrait of the person he has managed to uncover. But when necessary, as in a favorable profile of Katharine Graham, Remnick can be as blunt as any editorial writer: "the demand for unreasonable profits is undermining the quality of American journalism."

The essays in Reporting are arranged into five untitled sections, which might be labeled as domestic politics and media, literary intellectuals, Russia, Israel and Palestine, and boxing. Since David Remnick is one of the remaining standard-bearers for the long article, the essays are educational feasts for the curious mind. "The Democracy Game: Hamas Comes to Power in Palestine" should be on the reading list of anyone who wants to understand the dynamics of power, hatred, and faith in the Middle East, and the profiles of Vaclav Havel, Vladimir Putin, and Mike Tyson are fascinating.

Armchair Interviews says: This book is highly recommended for readers who enjoy well-written profiles of interesting people.

David Remnick is a perceptive reporter and a lucid writer. The longer stories, such as the first of two profiles of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, have nuance and a sense of completeness that are the hallmark of the best kind of journalism. The shorter pieces are packed with verve and deadpan observation. The story of aging boxer Larry Holmes' "comeback" bout -- held in an annex of Madison Square Garden that is "the venue for such parental jungle missions as Sesame Street Live" -- is probably the funniest, saddest one-and-a-half pages I've read in a long time.

I mentioned that there are two pieces on Solzhenitsyn; this is part of the problem with this anthology: there simply isn't enough variety here. There are five profiles of literary figures(six if you count the piece on translators of Russian literature), four pieces about Mike Tyson or in which he figures heavily, four pieces on Cold War-era dissidents (including the two on Solzhenitsyn) and so on.

It's reasonable to assume that these subjects fascinate Remnick most, though he never gets around to telling us so himself. But for me, it sometimes felt like I was reading more or less the same story over and over.

These all are good stories, but there could have been more.

Anyone interested in public affairs will find some of the best writing of the last decade here, from Remnick's profiles of Blair, Gore, Havel and Putin to Netanyahu, Sharansky, Arafat and Solzhenitsyn--few reporters have captured these players in a more intelligent, illuminating fashion. In between, there's also fascinating reading with his takes of everyone from Philip Roth and Don DeLillo to Mike Tyson. Even though I had read every single one of these pieces in The New Yorker before, Remnick is one of those rare writers who reads even better the second and third time around. A joy to read from start to finish.

Mr. Remnick has created a fine series of portraits that reveal subjects that often don't get or want much attention. Highly recommended. Download this to your Kindle now and enjoy spending time with some fascinating people and places.

Excellent reporter and editor at the top of his game. Remnick is versatile and able to provide great insight into the character of an individual or event without the narcissistic first person narrative style of so many of his contemporaries.

I've read The New Yorker since high school. I read David Remnick's essays and reports faithfully, and I admire his editing...so I looked forward to this "vintage" book. I am disappointed in the quality of the cover, the paper, and the print. The book - not Remnick's writing - is third-rate - or worse. The print is faint, the paper sub-par. I've stopped reading the book because of these issues...so very disappointing.